by Rick R. Reed
Mark stared at the TV screen. Canned laughter erupted from an old rerun of I Love Lucy. Mark didnt look at Dan as he said, “Im fine here. Have a good time.”
Dan shook his head, debating whether he should try a little harder to convince Mark to come. In the end, though, he knew such attempts would be futile, and even if he did succeed, Mark would simply ruin the whole day with glowering silence. It wouldnt be the first time.
Dan sighed and closed the door behind him without a word or a kiss good-bye. He knew that Mark would be fine without either.
He sucked in a deep breath and eyed the crystal-blue sky, the sunshine, and the palm trees swaying in the breeze, which this morning, was not in the least humid.
At least one thing—the weather—was going right today.
Chapter Five
MARK watched from the peephole as Dan reversed his Escort and headed out of the parking lot. For good measure, he glanced at the clock, noted the time, and sat staring at the TV, timing out a full fifteen minutes, just to ensure that if Dan did forget something and had to come back, he wouldnt be caught in a compromising position.
Safe from what? Mark wondered. I should be safe—or free—to do whatever I want in my own house, right? Im a grown man. I shouldnt have to worry about some other guys disapproval of how I choose to run my own life. Yet, there was a part of Mark that was grateful for the disapproval, for Dans paranoia. At least it showed someone cared.
There were so few people who cared. Mark thought briefly of the single mother who had raised him, Sharon, and how she seldom had enough time for him, too busy with men and booze to tend to him. “Honey, youll be fine here tonight. Youve got the TV and your stuffed monkey to keep you company. Theres M&Ms in the kitchen if you get hungry. Im gonna lock the door behind me so youll be safe, okay? You watch the clock and when the big hand is on the twelve and the little one is on the nine, you go to bed.” The conversation, variations of which were repeated many times during Marks formative years, came back to him now, unbidden and stinging.
Apple doesnt fall far from the tree , a voice from out of nowhere taunted. Shut up, Marks conscious mind replied.
After fifteen minutes, Mark shut the TV off, went into the kitchen freezer, slid aside a bag of peas and carrots, and withdrew his pack of Camel Lights. Returning to the living room, he shut off the air and opened the sliding glass door as far as it would go. With a shaking hand and pounding heart, he lit up and exhaled a stream of blue-gray smoke through the screen. He immediately felt calmer.
He picked up the phone and dialed the number for a man he had met in one of the AOL men-for-men chat rooms. Their meeting was fortuitous, because Mark was hankering for some coke something fierce that day and the guy sold it. A small part of Mark was sad to have made the connection. It meant his dreams of staying clean were wiped out with a minute-long instant message exchange. He never had been much good at resisting temptation. He knew himself well enough to know that.
Brian was the guys name. He was a forty-something troll who lived down in Ybor City, and when Mark had first chatted with him, Mark knew Brian thought the two were going to hook up. And Mark might have been okay with the idea if it meant scoring some free drugs. Then he saw Brian and realized the pic he had sent him had to be at least fifteen years old. Much more weight and much less hair later, Brian was not exactly a sight for sore eyes. So Mark could bless himself for staying faithful to Dan, if only in practice rather than spirit. He didnt ponder over what Dan would think of him doing coke. He knew.
So when Mark had arrived at Brians smelly and cramped Ybor City digs, he had said he was in a hurry and could he just buy half of an eight ball. Brian had been disappointed, Mark could tell, but he could also tell that the guy was a businessman and he wasnt about to turn away a new client.
They had made changed hands, Mark felt a powerful rush, almost as though he had already done his first line or two. He could feel himself nearly trembling with need and knew he would be able to get no farther than his car before he would have to get some of the white substance up his nose. Ingesting it would be a massive relief, a direct hit of endorphins, and his finest orgasm all rolled into one. He couldnt, the exchange, and as money and cocaine couldnt, couldnt wait.
All of his worries about how he would explain the sixty-dollar hit to their shared checking account, his sure-to-be sleeplessness in the coming night, and any other telltale signs had vanished with the sight of that little yellow plastic baggie, half-filled with rocks and powder.
“Can I sniff?” he had asked, and without waiting for an answer, had pulled apart the Ziploc seal and inhaled. A sharp, pungent tang greeted him and told him that he wasnt being taken. This wasnt some stepped-on, cut shit. It was good stuff.
He couldnt, couldnt, couldnt wait.
Now, as Mark picked up the cordless phone, reminding himself to delete the call from memory, he wondered how he would stand the wait. It was a good thing Brian was willing to deliver. He only hoped hed be up for a trip over to the west side this early in the day. Mark considered that he would do almost anything to entice him.
He punched in Brians number. He had committed it to memory and knew that, even if he tried, he would never be able to forget these seven digits. It was both a blessing and a curse. Once the connection was made, a mechanical womans voice prompted him to enter his number if he wanted to be called back. “Of course I want to be called back, you stupid bitch.” Mark punched in the seven digits of his own number, sweating and praying that Brian had his pager with him and on. He wouldnt know how to explain it to Dan if the call came later, when he was home. Wrong number?
He disconnected and stood to pace, watching the clock. Ten minutes passed, then fifteen. He sat down at the computer in their bedroom, to play Solitaire and to distract himself from watching the clock. After exactly thirty-seven minutes had passed, the cordless rang. Mark snatched it up, breathing a sigh of relief when he noticed the caller ID read “Private.”
“Its Mark.”
“Hey pumpkin, hows it goin?” Brians nasal, southerntwanged voice came through the phone, all cheeriness and light. Mark wanted to scream to just cut to the chase, but somehow he managed to calm himself.
“Good. Beautiful day. And I was just thinking how you could help make it even more beautiful.”
“Moi?” Brian laughed.
Mark couldnt stand it. “I was hoping you could help me out.”
Brian sighed. “What do you need?”
“Can you do a quarter?”
“Can you come down here and pick it up?”
Shit. “No, man, sorry. I dont have wheels today.” He lied; he had his own car, a Mustang left over from his days as a hotshot salesman at a Ford Mercury dealership on Western Avenue in Chicago. But he didnt want to be bothered with making the trip, not when he was pretty sure Brian could be coerced into making a delivery. Ybor City was a good fifteen or twenty minutes away, more if there was traffic on I-4.
“I cant drive all the way out there for $30, man, you should know that.”
Mark sighed. He was this close. But how would he explain another $60 hit to their account? He didnt know, but fuck it, he would worry about it later. “How bout a half then?”
“I dont know.”
“Come on, man.”
“Whats in it for me?”
Mark would not sleep with this guy. He just couldnt, wouldnt do it. Not even for coke. He had not sunk that low.
“Can I at least get a kiss?”
Mark blew out an impatient sigh and then attempted to sound calm, cheerful even, as he said, “Sure, a kiss and $60. How soon can you be here?”
MARK was bored with the porn on TV. He had watched El Paso Trucking and was now into Rectum Wreckers and it simply wasnt doing anything for him. He glanced down at the clock on the VCR and thought he had at least another couple of hours before there was even a chance of Dan coming home.
He had already worked his way through almost the entire Baggie of coke. There had been so much
when he started! And now it was almost all gone. It left Mark feeling sad at the loss, almost as if a good friend, one whose company he enjoyed immensely, had dropped by and was now leaving. The coke also left him feeling euphoric, jittery, and restless all at once. Hed realize he was grinding his teeth, then stop himself, only to start up again. He had smoked almost a whole pack of cigarettes and knew hed never get the smell out of the apartment before Dan returned, even with the windows wide open and two fans blowing.
Dan would just have to deal with it.
But the restlessness nagged at him, like a second presence in the room. It urged him to get off the couch and do something. He couldnt just sit there, stroking a limp dick and watching other men have all the fun. It was getting tiresome.
And he could not sit still.
When Brian had dropped off his delivery, he had mentioned something about checking out the action on the Courtney Campbell Causeway. “Theres a little beach area on the Tampa side,” he had said. “Guys cruise there all the time and the mangroves allow plenty of privacy, if you know what I mean, sweet cheeks.”
Did he dare go down there? It would probably only take him about ten minutes to get to the causeway from the apartment and it might be fun, if only to watch some live porn for a change. Mark grinned, imagining an orgy in the shades of the mangrove trees, while the sun filtered down through the leaves on tanned and muscular bodies engaged in sweaty couplings of every sort. Sort of Boys in the Sand… live!
But Dan would cross over that same causeway at some point on his way home. What if he saw Marks car parked by the side of the road?
Oh, what were the odds of that? A sirens voice in his head soothed. Besides, yours is not the only red Mustang in Tampa, for Gods sake. Come on, just go and have a look, see if its as cruisy as Brian says it is….
In his current state of mind, Mark didnt require much convincing. He hopped from the couch, grabbed some paper towels out of the kitchen and quickly cleaned from the coffee table any stray evidence of his partying. Any crumbs that were big enough to see, he rubbed into his gums. He positioned the floor fan backwards in front of the screen of the sliding glass doors, hoping it would act as a powerful exhaust, sucking all the cigarette smoke right out of the apartment.
Yeah, right. Good luck with that. You really think itll suck smoke out of fabric and upholstery?
Oh shut the fuck up!
He hurried into the bedroom, where he donned an old Chicago Bears T-shirt, Levis cutoffs, and his high-top Reeboks. He glanced in the mirror and decided that, other than a sweaty face and pupils so big they almost made his eyes appear one continuous shade of brown bordering on black, he looked okay.
Im not going to do anything, anyway, he promised himself. Im just going to have a little look-see. He hoped he saw a lot.
Now make sure youre back within an hour or two, you want to make sure youre here before Dan gets home.
Mark hurried out the door, checking he had his wallet, keys, and smokes with him. He debated whether to take the coke with him, but in the end, decided against it. If he got pulled over for speeding or something, he wouldnt want to have drugs on him. That was half his rationale for not going down to Ybor City to pick up the stuff himself. What a nightmare! Quickly, and almost trembling with pent-up energy, he spilled out the small remains of the little Baggie onto the coffee table, chopped the coke into two fat lines, and snorted them up with the cut-in-half straw he had been using. “Ah!”
He was about to throw the straw and Baggie into the trash, then thought they would be better disposed of as he headed down the road, out the car window, doing sixty. No traces.
Mark wiggled his tongue inside the little Baggie to get any bit of coke left and headed out for his beach adventure.
THE causeway was a bore. The only signs of life Mark saw were the horseshoe crabs, scurrying around in the shallow water of Tampa Bay. There had been a couple of guys on beach towels sunning themselves, but nothing else. One of them, hidden by some sea oats, was naked, but he looked like the love child of Howie Mandel and Chuck Barris… with a potbelly. Mark had traipsed through the copses of mangrove trees and saw that the trails just back from the shoreline were well-traveled and obviously used for fun purposes at some point (he stopped counting after seeing six used condoms), but there was no one there back there today.
Maybe it was busier at night? Who knew? But his buzz was beginning to wear off and he felt frustrated and disappointed as he marched across the hot sand back to his car.
But—wait a minute—there was a really, really cute guy standing just ahead of him, staring out at the water. Mark slowed his pace to drink him in. He wore a pair of cargo shorts, a crisp, white Tshirt, and running shoes. He had a trim, athletic build and his calves were a study in tanned musculature. He had light brown curly hair, a moustache, and wore aviator-style sunglasses.
And could it be? Yes! He had turned to watch as Mark neared him. His handsome face broke into a smile as Mark drew up to him. “Hey,” he said, in a deep voice that immediately wiped out all of Marks disappointment, and brought back his high—and his horniness—in a single breath.
“Hey,” Mark replied, slowing. Mark looked the guy up and down, as the guy did the same to him. Both men wore knowing grins. Almost as one, both turned out to look at the still water of Tampa Bay, as it reflected the relentless afternoon sun. On the horizon, low, puffy clouds gathered, warming up for their afternoon light and sound show. But right now, the heat of the sun and the admiring glance of this handsome stranger made Mark feel hot on many levels.
The guy spoke. “You know what would be nice?”
“What?”
“If that water was actually cool.” He laughed. “Its like fuckin
bathwater, so it does no good to even think about getting in it. Youd only come out hotter and wetter than you were before you went in.” “And what would you wear in the water, anyway?”
The guy gave Mark a pointed look. “Why wear anything?”
Mark smiled. “Why indeed?”
The guy took off his sunglasses and Mark was thrilled to see he had the most beautiful eyes. Thick lashes framed unusually striking irises, which, here in the sun, almost seemed turquoise. “So what brings you out here today?” the guy asked him.
Mark shrugged. “Oh, you know, just checkin things out. Seein whos out here.”
The man nodded knowingly. “Yeah, its pretty dead. You come to the causeway a lot?”
Mark didnt know why, but he didnt want to admit that this was his first time. He also wanted to use his next conversational gambit to check further and see if the guy was here for the same reason he was. Admittedly, he was already pretty certain he was, since the looks he had given him were obviously cruisy, the same mating dance of the eyes gay men had used for generations. “I get down here once in a while, yeah. But youre right, its really dead today.”
“Ive heard it gets busier in the early evening, when its just starting to get dark. Maybe were just here too early today.”
“Too early for what?” Mark thought he might as well be bold.
The guy playfully pushed him. “You know! Dont play innocent with me.”
They both laughed and Mark said, “I guess youre right. Innocent is pretty hard for me to do these days. So what brings you out here?”
“Oh you know. Same as you.”
Mark nodded. They could stand here all day making inane chatter, or he could move things to the next level. As nonchalantly as he could, he asked, “You wanna walk back into the mangroves?” He shrugged. “Get out of the sun.”
“Im Keith.”
“Mark.” He started moving toward the cool shade of the trees behind them and was happy to see Keith following. Even though coke played wicked havoc with his erections, right now he was experiencing no such problems. Mark figured it was the potent cocktail of this guys gorgeous hunkiness combined with the summer sun and salt-tinged air, and the remnants of his high. The prospect of some risky, outdoor sex didnt hurt either, Mark
figured.
Keith called out from behind him as they stepped into the shade. “So what do you like, Mark?”
Ah, the classic question that preceded so many gay sexual encounters. He knew he was on firm footing now, and his racing heart pounded a little faster. He slowed and looked over his shoulder. “I like it all,” he said a little hoarsely, not wanting to rule out anything this hunk preferred, but he was already imagining himself bent over, shorts around his ankles, as this guy nailed him from behind. He wondered how big his dick would be, and his breath quickened at the thought of it.
They stopped at a little clearing in the mangroves. There was a used rubber hanging from a branch, and discarded Kleenex, napkins, and paper towels littered the ground, along with a few crushed beer cans. The men faced one another and, for just a moment, Mark had an irrational stab of fear. Must be paranoia from the coke, he told himself, but it wouldnt hurt to ask the question that was on his mind.
He grinned sheepishly, he knew, as he blurted out, “So Keith, youre not a cop, are you?”
Keith gave him one of those killer, sexy grins Mark already loved. “Now, Mark, why would you ask that?”
“Never mind. Just wanted to be sure.” Mark had heard somewhere that police officers had to admit they were so employed if asked directly, and he figured Keiths response was pretty close to a denial—close enough for him, anyway. “So, you never told me what you like,” Mark said.
“I like to watch.”
The sentence hung in the air as the two stood silently, facing one another for several moments, the atmosphere suddenly charged with possibility.
Mark was all at once grateful that the causeway beach was so empty. He glanced around to ensure it remained so, and then peeled off his shirt. The sun beat down through the trees on his chest, making it glisten and arousing him further. Keith licked his lips and stared, and then a light smile flitted across his face.
Mark knew Keith was wordlessly—and very eloquently— urging him on. Mark seductively bit his lower lip, never removing his gaze from Keiths rapt eyes as he popped the top button on his Levi cutoffs, then another, then another, until finally he pulled out his cock, grateful that the coke had not dissuaded it from being rock-hard—not in the least. He looked down at the thick shaft, proud of its veins standing out in relief, the bulbous purple head, the drop of pre-come poised at the slit. Without lifting his gaze, he worked up a big glob of spit, opened his mouth, and let it drop to his dick head. With the lube, he began stroking himself up and down, anticipating the feel of this hot mans lips on his shaft. He looked up to see what kind of reaction he was getting.
